


Floating In A Most Peculiar Way

by kathierif_fic



Category: Leverage
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathierif_fic/pseuds/kathierif_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A normal week on the good starship <em>Leverage</em>: the crew has just finished a job and all should be well, if Parker wasn’t acting strange - stranger than usual. Hardison investigates, but he did not expect what he found out (oh, hell, no.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floating In A Most Peculiar Way

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [space bigbang](http://spacebigbang.livejournal.com) community on LJ. The mix was done by [TeaOtter](http://teaotter.livejournal.com) and can be found [here](http://www.sendspace.com/file/k40jj7). The art for the fic was done by [deadflowers5](http://deadflowers5.livejournal.com) and can be found [here](http://deadflowers5.livejournal.com/100728.html).  
> Thanks for all the great work you did!  
> Also thanks to [Ginny](http://ginny305.livejournal.com) for the awesome betaing!

Nate Ford folded his arms across his chest while staring at the scene in front of him. He couldn't help but feel proud of what he and his team had achieved that day. Because of them, a family was reunited and a big corperation that had made its business out of exploiting innocent farmers had been handed a hard blow.

He felt Sophie step up to him and stop by his elbow, her presence filling his consciousness before he even thought about turning to face her. He didn't need to. He knew that she was wearing the same expression of grim satisfaction that he could feel on his own face.

Soft rustling by his other elbow meant that Eliot was back. This time Nate risked a quick glance. Eliot was rubbing his hand with a small grimace that he forced away as soon as he realized that someone was looking at him. Parker appeared at Eliot's other side, her body hunched over defensively and her arms wrapped around herself.

A glance in the other direction, to make sure Hardison was there as well, and Nate exhaled softly.

"Well," he said, his voice quiet and filled with triumph, "let's go home."

~*+*~

Nate was the first to turn away from the family, but his team quickly followed him back to where they had parked the shuttle, hidden from sight.

Hardison pressed his palm flat against the access panel and waited while the computer scanned his prints and biological data.

"Can I fly?" Parker asked hopefully from behind him. Hardison hunched up his shoulders slightly, his thoughts racing, but he couldn't come up with a good excuse why he wouldn't let Parker take control of his baby, not before Eliot growled, "Hell, no. You're not flying this thing."

"Why not?" Parker asked, but she didn't wait for an answer as the lock disengaged and the doors opened. She climbed into the back of the shuttle and pulled her feet up before wrapping her arms around her knees and pillowing her chin on them.

Eliot rolled his eyes and took the seat next to her. Nate joined them, letting Sophie take the seat in front with the view.

"It's not fair," Parker mumbled into her knees, but she there was no heat in her words, and neither Eliot nor Nate paid special attention to her.

~*+*~

The _Leverage_ was a small ship, but it was well-equipped and filled with the latest and best of technology. Hardison had spent weeks making sure she was the best she could be and setting foot on the ship was by now a little bit like stepping into Nana's kitchen. He knew his way around the ship with his eyes closed and while half-asleep, and he knew every nook and cranny like the back of his hand. He'd programmed the main systems and had outfit the engines to get maximum performance out of them and make sure they could reach each and every part of the galaxy within the shortest amount of time possible and, even more important, to make sure they could leave just as fast if the need arose.

The sound of Eliot’s heavy boots on the metal floorplates was as familiar as the creaks and groans of the ceiling when Parker pulled herself through the ventilation shafts and vents and the whine of the engines when the _Leverage_ went at high-speed.

Hardison found himself grinning as he ran his fingertips along the wall of the engine room. This was his domain, the part of the ship where he spent most of his time. Sophie was an extraordinary pilot, as was Eliot, and Nate was capable of plotting a course to their next destination almost as quick as the navigation computer - almost.

But the engines and computers were Hardison's responsibility, and it was his pride and joy to keep the ship running as smoothly as possible.

The _Leverage_ was a cylindric ship, looking like an old-fashioned cigar, with the command centrum at the very tip and the engine room at the other end. The red glow of the engines' exhausts only enhanced the similarity to a cigar. Hardison had painted with painstaking care the name of the ship on the hull, even when he was pretty sure that nobody would ever come close enough to read it. He'd done it more as a symbolic gesture, and none of Eliot's sneers had stopped him from touching up on the writing every time they actually brought the _Leverage_ down to a planet. Between the command centrum and the engine room, there were the common room and the crew quarters. It was a little cramped, but it was enough for the five of them.

It was home for all of them.

Hardison fell into his work chair. He'd built it himself out of scrapped parts of the engine, and he was careful about making sure that nobody else ever sat in it.

His long fingers brushed gently along the edges of his keyboard before he started to work. He had to erase every trace of their presence and their involvements in this case before they left the system.

It was routine and his fingers did the necessary work while his mind was wandering. Nate, he knew without checking the internal sensors, was in the command centrum, preparing for their exit from the system and Sophie wouldn't be far. She would make sure that Nate would be okay - she always did.

Eliot was in the common room. Hardison could hear him grumble quietly while he banged pots and pans around. He didn't quite know where Parker was. She had disappeared as soon as the shuttle had docked on the ship and the magnetic clamps had engaged, allowing them safe passage from the smaller to the bigger ship, but the sounds coming from the ceiling told him that she was in there somewhere. Parker knew how to move through the vents without making any sounds, but she knew that he felt better when he knew she was in there and, sometimes, she remembered to indulge him. She had been quiet when they'd come home, he realized, and he made a mental note to keep an eye on her while he deleted the grainy security feed that showed Eliot beating up five guards at the same time.

He sighed almost inaudibly as he watched the feed for a second. There was something about Eliot's gracefulness that he could watch for hours without tiring of it, and he almost felt sorry that he had to delete it.

Almost.

This would be the last thing he had to do before they could leave. He leaned back in his chair and relaxed for a moment before he reached up to his ear to activate the implanted in-ear communication device.

"Nate, we're good to go," he reported. Moments later, the entire ship vibrated gently as the engines were powered up.

There was nothing to do for Hardison right now. The engines were running smoothly and he had several programs in place to make sure to warn him in time should anything go wrong.

All he had to do was to wait and let the sounds and vibrations of the engines soothe him and hack himself into the galaxy-wide net, always on the search for new cases, new conspiracies and new challenges.

This was his favourite time, when they were still feeling the high of a job well-done and nothing urgent was going on, when he knew that his family was safe and when he could log into his game account and waste a few hours playing.

He had all evening, and there was no reason to get up, besides to get himself some orange soda from the Matter Compiler in the common room and to get some of his gummi frogs from the hiding place behind his bunk.

Everything was fine, and yet, there was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that he couldn't shake, no matter how deeply he submersed himself into his game, but he couldn't figure out what was causing this feeling.

He just shrugged. It would come back to him eventually, he was sure of that.

 

~*+*~

Hardison slowly forced his eyes open. The side of his face was smashed into his pillow and a sharp computer part was digging painfully in his side where he'd fallen asleep on it.

He groaned as he rolled over and bumped into another piece of equipment before he could press his forehead against the cool wall. If Eliot could see him right now, he would mock him mercilessly, he simply knew, but there was no low, gravelly voice threatening him for the engine parts that had found their way here, into the bunk. It was bad enough that two of the four bunks of the crew quarters had been taken over by engine parts and computer bits, making the room look like the engine room which was right next to it had organically grown and was now trying to take over the rest of the ship.

It had been late when he'd finally stumbled into bed, and he was sure that he hadn't slept that long. He was still feeling exhausted and his thoughts felt shattered and fragmented. It actually took him a moment to realize that he had been woken by a sharp, penetrating sound.

He groaned again and rolled himself over again and out of the bunk. His bare feet hit the metal floor and he bit back a sharp curse at the cold seeping up his legs before his toes found his shoes and he managed to slip into them.

The cold had one advantage: It helped his fuzzy thoughts to clear up slightly, and he figured out that the sharp sound that was still filling the room was the alarm that told him something was blocking the main ventilation shaft that ran through the ship and made sure they always and everywhere had fresh air to breathe.

Eliot was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't much of a surprise. He'd come to bed after Hardison had, and he'd gotten up sometime in the middle of the night. Hardison hadn't heard him leave, which, he figured as he reached for his computer to run a quick diagnostics scan, wasn't all that unusual, as well. Eliot really slept only for ninety minutes a day, and Hardison had no clue what he was doing the rest of the time. He could find out without problems, but he'd chosen not to. The ship was small enough that it was almost impossible to escape from each other, and Hardison instinctively knew that, if he wanted to avoid getting stabbed by a kitchen utensil while he was sleeping, he needed to let Eliot have that little bit of privacy. Eliot was so different from the machines and computers Alec was dealing with every day, and he oftentimes simply didn't know how to act around the other man, but this was something he instinctively grasped.

He rubbed his knuckles into his eyes and yawned widely while stepping into the common area of the ship, to get some orange soda and figure out how to deal with the ventilation best.

Eliot was already there. He'd pulled his hair back into a messy ponytail and was stirring something in a bowl.

"Eggs?" Hardison asked hopefully as he slumped down into one of the chairs.

Eliot growled at him and Hardison chose to take that as an affirmative answer. He yawned again and poked at his computer again, to find out where they were and where they were headed. If Eliot wanted to be grumpy and mono-syllabic in the mornings, Hardison would not be the one to stop him.

Not today.

"What's that noise?" Eliot asked and slammed the bowl down on the table. Hardison jumped slightly, but he did his best to try and hide it.

"What noise?" he asked and made the mistake of looking up. Eliot was surprisingly close, and he was holding a long, sharp knife in his hand.

It made Hardison jump again, even if he knew perfectly well that Eliot wouldn't hurt him. He could do it, and he always threatened that he would, but Hardison knew that those were empty threats.

"That noise," Eliot said and tilted his head slightly to the side.

Hardison shrugged. "That's nothing, man," he said dismissively and turned back to his computer. "Just an alarm to let us know something is blocking the main ventilation shaft."

Eliot stared at him. Hardison knew that without looking up from his screen. He was trying to hunt down the alarm that was acting up despite the fact that he had disengaged it earlier and didn't have the time to have a staring contest with Eliot right now.

"The main ventilation shaft." Eliot's voice was even and without inflection.

"Yeah, you know." Hardison shrugged while his fingers flew over his keyboard. "The big tube that runs through our ship and makes sure we have breathable air everywhere."

"And it's blocked now."

Hardison hummed. "Yeah."

"Dammit, Hardison!" The outburst was almost expected at that point, but it still left Hardison frowning.

"What?" he said. "Don't you think I know what I'm doing, man? Don't worry, I have it all under control!" He shook his head. "I'll let Parker check it later, when she shows up. Chill, man."

Eliot's face had slowly turned a faint shade of red. "Why don't you go yourself and check it?" he asked, his words pressed slowly from in between clenched teeth.

"Hell no!" Hardison shook his head empathically. "There's things in those vents, things, I'm telling you!"

"Things." Eliot was back to repeating single words of what Hardison was telling him. In everyone else, Hardison would suspect a diminished intellect, but with Eliot, he knew that it was the other man fighting for his control.

"Yeah! I swear, I once saw a bunny up there!" Hardison shuddered theatrically. "Who else knows what's hiding in the vents?"

Eliot huffed a breath of annoyance and turned on his heel, to leave the common area. Hardison could track the sound of Eliot's heavy boots through the crew quarters and into the engine room, where they fell silent.

He grinned. He knew exactly what Eliot was looking for. He'd grown a little herb garden in the mess that was their engines, hidden from sight but not from Hardison. Hardison knew exactly what was happening in his engine room, but he didn't say anything about the sudden presence of soil and green leaves there. The engine room was the perfect environment to grow these things, apparently. There was enough light and heat, and there also was enough moisture in the air from the cooling water of the engines to keep them happy and green.

Sliding from his chair, he stood and followed Eliot.

"You know," he said and leaned against the environment controls with his arms crossed over his chest, "I know what I'm doing here. We won't suffocate."

Eliot didn't turn around to face him. He was leaning against the vents and tubes opposite his little garden - the vents and tubes that hid Nate's still, Hardison knew.

"Hey," Hardison said, suddenly uncomfortable with Eliot's stillness and the tense line of his shoulders. He took a step closer, and another one, and slowly, carefully reached out to brush his palm over the sharp line of a shoulder blade under the soft material of Eliot's shirt. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah." Eliot looked up slowly and Hardison grinned and took another step closer, until he was right in Eliot's personal space and Eliot needed to tilt his head up to look at him, and suddenly, a grate banged against the wall at the other end of the room.

Hardison took a step back again, regret in his eyes, before craning his neck to look over his shoulder.

"Parker?" he yelled.

"What?" came the weirdly echoing answer from somewhere above them. Seconds later, a blonde ponytail appeared from the ceiling.

"Oh, hey guys," she said brightly, but it sounded forced, Hardison thought. He frowned, but before he could open his mouth and ask her if she was okay, Eliot shifted next to him, his shoulders still tense, and Hardison gave Parker a winning smile.

"Can you do me a favor?" he asked gently and stepped closer to the vent. "Something's blocking our main ventilation vents, could you check if something's broken up there?" He was sure that everything was fine, having set up alarms for every kind of accident that could happen on board of the ship, but he still asked.

"Sure." Parker forced a grin that was so obviously fake that she could just as well have outright grimaced at him and disappeared into the vent again.

"Happy now?" he asked Eliot, but Eliot only grunted and left without a single word.

Ten minutes later a little message appeared on Hardison's screen, telling him the obstruction had been removed. Hardison nodded in satisfaction, yelled "Thank you, Parker" into the vent and went back to the common area, to finally get the orange soda he'd wanted.

He pretended not to be surprised when he sat down and an omelet was put in front of him despite their little argument, and he pretended not to be even more surprised when Eliot's fingers lingered a little bit too much while handing over the silverware. Instead, he smiled softly at the other man, allowed his fingers to be held for that little split-second Eliot allowed and then focused on the omelet in front of him and the taste of fresh herbs, something that no Matter Compiler in the entire universe could produce to this perfection.

He was almost done with his food when he realized that Parker hadn't shown up. That, he reflected while rubbing his stomach, was really unusual. Parker wasn't one to stay away from the offer of food. She might ask Eliot to put sprinkles or cheese and chocolate or something equally as disgusting on hers, but she rarely skipped a meal.

Something was definitely odd here.

~*+*~

Alec woke briefly when a warm, comfortable weight settled against him, a curse was whispered and a piece of equipment that had found its way into the bunk was dropped onto the ground.

"That could be important," he managed to mumble into the pillow. "And breakable!"

"Not if you can sleep on it," Eliot growled and yanked at the sheets.

Alec briefly considered arguing the point, but he was too exhausted, so he let it drop without further comment. Instead, he rolled over until he was lying half on top of Eliot and inhaled the smell of his hair.

"Stop sniffing me," Eliot ordered with a quiet growl, but his arm was sneaking around Alec's waist and his hand settled low on his back, pushing up Alec's t-shirt and rubbing soothing circles into the warm skin underneath.

Alec snorted and rested his hand on Eliot's chest. His fingertips brushed over bare skin, and he hummed appreciatively.

Warm, dry lips brushed against the side of his neck, and Alec relaxed into a boneless sprawl against Eliot's side. He knew he should be dozing off again, the way he usually did after a day like this, but something kept him awake.

It wasn't much more than a little nag at the back of his mind, but it was growing stronger.

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Eliot. "Hey," he mumbled and traced his fingertip down the center of Eliot's chest. "You notice anything weird about Parker lately?"

"Weird? Weird how?" Eliot twitched under his touch, but he didn't pull away.

"I don't know, man. Weird." He grimaced. "Weirder than usual."

"No." Eliot reached up and trapped Alec's fingers against his chest.

"I don't know," Alec repeated. "She's acting weird. I haven't seen her all day long. She's hiding something."

"She's Parker," Eliot said and tightened his grip on Alec's fingers for a split second. "You going to sleep now, or what?"

"Yes," Alec said petulantly and turned away from him, his forehead pressed against the cool wall next to him.

Eliot huffed behind him and yanked at the blanket, but then he fell silent and didn't try to talk to Alec again.

~*+*~

He woke the next morning to the gentle growl of the engines, the bulkhead his cheek was pressed in vibrating gently.

"Where are we going?" he asked aloud, but he didn't expect an answer. It was obvious that he was alone and that Eliot was long gone.

At least, he thought as he unwrapped himself from the blankets, Eliot had pulled the sheets up around Alec's shoulders instead of just leaving him hanging.

He put on clean clothes, made a quick sweep of the engine room to make sure Eliot's herb garden was watered, that Nate's still was still working properly, and that the engines were running smoothly before he wandered into the common area in search of breakfast, or at least some orange soda.

He found Sophie at the table. She was reading a magazine on one of the screens and drinking a cup of tea.

"Hey, Soph." Alec tilted his head to the side and slowly unscrewed the top of the bottle. "Can I ask you something?"

Sophie looked up from her magazine. "Of course," she said and twitched her lips into a small smile.

Sophie Devereaux was not only a great grifter, but also a talented pilot. Her true passion, however, was the stage, and although she had no talent whatsoever for that kind of acting, she didn't give up on her dream. In between jobs, she left the Leverage-crew to return to the most well-known movie-producing planets in the system to further that aspect of her career. So far, she hadn’t had any success. Alec, who knew what she could do when she was grifting, was constantly amazed and shocked about how bad an actor Sophie was on the various stages of the galaxy.

"It's about Parker," he admitted in a low voice and fidgeted with his bottle. "Has she been acting...strange lately?"

Sophie thought for a moment. "You know," she started slowly, "There are days in the month when a woman needs some space, Hardison."

Hardison found himself grimacing and shaking his head, to stop Sophie from elaborating on that, but she was on a roll and it was five minutes before he could force out a thanks and flee to the safety of the engine room again.

There were things he didn't want to know about Parker or females in general.

~*+*~

When Parker hadn't shown up for half the day, Alec dared to leave the safety of the engine room and went to the command center, where he found Nate staring into space. His hands were resting on the ship's controls, and every now and then, he would correct their course without even looking down.

"Hey, Nate." Alec leaned against the wall and unscrewed one of the panels there. He gently set it down and frowned at the chaos of wires in front of him before selecting one and tugging it carefully.

"Hardison." Nate's eyes flickered over to him. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah." Alec reached into his pocket and pulled out a screwdriver. "Just have to fix the backwards sensors, make sure we're not followed. There's a glitch." He fell silent as he worked on the wires for a few minutes, but then, he was finished with his work and turned back to Nate. "Hey, listen..."

Nate looked up.

"It's about Parker."

"What about her?"

Alec shrugged a little bit. "I don't know, man," he admitted. "She...has she been acting strange since we came back?" He didn't wait for Nate to answer. Nate had been holed up at the controls of the ship for the past few days, and if Parker hadn't shown up here, he had no clue in what way she was acting strange since their return to the ship. "Am I the only one who thinks she's acting weird?"

Nate smiled. "She's Parker," he said, his voice oddly gentle. "She's fine."

Alec rolled his eyes and put the panel back to the wall with a little more force than it was strictly necessary before leaving. Nate was, apparently, in one of his moods where he liked having secrets and being cryptic. It was bad during a job, but right now, it was downright annoying and frustrating.

He retreated back to the engine room, but he simply didn't have the patience to put together delicate pieces of computers and after a while, he carefully put them down, sighed deeply, and went to curl up in his bunk.

He was not pouting, he told himself as he pulled the blanket up to his shoulder. He was a grown man, not a teenage girl. He did not pout. No way.

The sound of steps interrupted his search for the right expression for what he was doing. They stopped right behind him. "What are you doing, Hardison?"

"Nothing." Alec turned around and frowned at Eliot unhappily. "What makes you think I'm doing something? I'm taking a break, a well-earned pause, if you want to..."

"Yeah. Scoot over," Eliot interrupted him, and before Alec could do more than open his mouth, he had taken off his boots and had stretched out next to Alec. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Alec murmured and curled himself against Eliot's side. "We should probably sleep."

"If you don't want to sleep, there's other things we can do," Eliot suggested, his lips pressed against the top of Alec's head. There was a hopeful tone to his voice, Alec noted, and he managed a small smile.

"Eliot, you horndog," he said, his frustrations forgotten for the moment, and slid his hands down Eliot's strong chest and further down, to his sides. His fingertips brushed against the edges of Eliot's waistband and slipped underneath teasingly.

Eliot chuckled warmly against the shell of his ear. His tongue curled against the whorls there before Alec turned his head and craned his neck.

Their lips connected in a kiss that quickly grew heated, and Alec felt arousal spiral through him and push all his worries about Parker's unusual behavior completely away. Eliot played his body like a fine-tuned instrument, an expensive and complicated instrument, but Eliot was a master. He was rolling his body on top of Alec's and pressing him into the thin mattress. Eliot was hot and heavy with muscles, but Alec didn't mind the weight as he ran his fingertips along the waistband of Eliot's pants, to the small of his back, where he spent several moments fingering the old scar there. There was no doubt that Eliot enjoyed the touch. He was arching his back and his breathing sped up slightly.

"Off," Alec moaned breathlessly. "Take off those pants, man, I wanna..." He stopped mid-sentence, but he didn't need to add another word. Eliot was smart enough and knew him well enough to know exactly what he wanted.

It wasn't easy to wriggle out of their clothes in the confined space of their bunk, but with some squirming, they managed. Alec pushed Eliot's pants off the edge and let them flutter to the ground without thinking about them, at least until they hit with a dull sound.

"What..." he started, but Eliot's lips were suddenly on his again, and his tongue was in Alec's mouth, thrusting in a distinctive rhythm that sent shivers down Alec's mouth and made a drop of pre-come appear at the tip of his erection.

Eliot pressed himself against Alec, pressing his own erection against Alec's. Alec's legs fell open, and the length of his hard dick pressed against his stomach. The tiny drop smeared against his own skin, and Alec reached up and squeezed Eliot's ass.

"Eliot..." he whined, and he didn't even care about it as Eliot rubbed himself against him until all he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, white spots dancing under his lids, arousal curling in a tight spiral in him. Sweat pooled at the back of his knees and the small of his back, but he barely noticed as he thrust up into Eliot's solid body, and came, hot and slick, the groan he couldn't hold back muffled by Eliot's tongue in his mouth. It was possible that he bit down, and judging by the way Eliot yanked away and growled "Dammit, Hardison!" he really did.

He couldn't find it in him to care about it as he sprawled over the space available, Eliot still half on top of him. Sweat and semen cooled on his stomach, and he was grinning widely. His entire body relaxed, his eyes slowly closed, but before he could drift off to sleep, Eliot said, his voice pitched just low enough to send a small shiver down Alec's back, "If you're that worried about Parker, why don't you go and ask her what's wrong with her?"

~+*+~

Talking to Parker, it turned out, was not as easy as it sounded. Hardison was hanging around in the kitchen area of the ship for half a day, thinking that Parker would show up sooner or later to get some food, but all he caught was a glimpse of a blonde ponytail at the edge of his vision while Sophie was making tea and chit-chatting about clothes. He wasn't paying too much attention to her, only enough to follow her meandering thoughts about the new uniforms the Intergalactic Police, InterPOL, had introduced, while he tried to keep an eye out for Parker.

Sooner or later, he reasoned with himself, she had to turn up for food. It was a biological imperative or something. Everybody needed to eat. She had to show up here.

Half a day later, he realized that she was a cat burgler first and foremost, and if she wanted to sneak past him, she would do so. The thought made him roll his eyes and finally abandon his post at the table.

This, he decided, was asking for different measures.

He returned to the engine room and dug around his work space until he found a small, battery-powered flashlight that still worked. He also found a set of miniature garden tools, which he suspected were Eliot's, and half a bottle of moonshine, which definitely was Nate's. The diamonds hidden away at the back of his drawer, he couldn't quite figure out who had put them there. It could have been everybody. Diamonds were the best way of paying, they were untraceable and they could be sold and bought on every planet for every kind of currency. They weren't just a girl's best friend, and oftentimes, they weren't just used to purchase parts for the ship they all called home, but they also made good conductors. If Parker knew how many diamonds were used to keep their engines running, she would probably try to steal some of them.

The thought made Alec grimace, and he chose not to follow that particular line of thinking any longer. Parker knew that they needed the engines to survive. She would not endanger all their lives.

Muttering a curse which would have made Nana wash out his mouth with soap Alec carefully eased one of the access panels open and gripped the edge tightly. The vents, he knew were big enough to allow him to crawl through them, but they always made him feel claustrophobic. This was so much more Parker's environment, and he was really thankful that she had so easily agreed to do as much of the work that needed to be done in these vents as she could.

Everything to keep him out of them, he now thought as he pulled himself up and into the dark tunnel.

The _Leverage_ was surrounded by and filled with vents. They were in the floors, the ceilings, and in the walls. Some of them were filled with cooling water or wires, others were used to ventilate the entire ship. Most of them were barely big enough to allow a person of Alec's statue to crawl through them on their stomach, but there were also some in which he could almost stand. Those were the main vents, and those were the vents he was heading to now.

He continued crawling, the flashlight held between his teeth muffling his curses, until he reached a junction and a bigger vent. Here, he could at least sit up, and here he could also see the first traces that someone was living in these vents. A pair of bright green boots had been discarded next to an access point which let in thin stripes of light.

Hardison looked through the grates into the storage room.

It was the biggest part of the ship, and it held everything, from their water tanks to Eliot's work-out equipment. The part of their food that didn't come from a Matter Compiler, too, was stored here. From his current point, Alec could see that an agile person could climb the crates and swing up into the access point. He had no doubt that Parker could do it without even thinking twice about it.

Rolling his eyes, he continued to crawl, careful not to put too much weight onto the grate. He was pretty sure that, should it open, he would fall to his death and Eliot would mock his dead and broken body for being so clumsy.

He encountered more traces of occupation. A set of old-fashioned manual lock-picks and locks, a collection of spoons, which, he figured, he had to talk to Parker about before Eliot figured out where exactly their silverware had gone, a blanket, and, finally, when he had reached the biggest vent in the ship, Parker herself.

She had wrapped herself into a blanket and the hood of her sweater was pulled over her head. Wrapped in her arms was a stuffed bunny.

"Hey girl," he greeted softly and moved a box of cereal out of his way. "It's me. Don't - don't run, okay?"

"Hardison." Her voice was flat, without even the barest hint of emotion, and her eyes were dull when she looked up at him.

"I just want to talk to you," he said soothingly and sat down next to her, close enough to see her breathe, but with enough distance between them to allow her some personal space.

"Talk? About what?" she asked with a confused frown.

"About..." Alec trailed off. "I don't know," he admitted. "Just talk. Why are you hiding up in these vents? Why are you trying to hide from us?"

"I'm not trying to hide," Parker argued. Her voice was louder now, but still without emotion.

"Then why are you here and not in the kitchen with us?" Alec wanted to know.

Parker did not answer. She didn't even look at him. She was staring straight ahead, at the dull grey of the wall in front of her, and Alec felt worry and concern fill him.

"Parker?" he asked carefully. "Hey, Parker, are you listening to me?"

He reached out to her, keeping his moves slow and deliberate, to avoid spooking her. When she didn't react, he closed his hand around her arm.

Parker's skin was freezing and hard. It wasn't soft like skin and flesh. Instead it had sharp edges like the delicate insides of an engine.

"Parker?" he asked worriedly. She flinched back violently and hunched defensively over her arm, which, he saw as he held up the flashlight, was wrapped up in what looked greasy, oily rags.

"It's nothing," she said quickly. Too quickly, he thought and narrowed his eyes at her, and Parker flinched again.

"Seriously?" he said and reached for her arm again. "Seriously, what's going on?"

Parker didn't answer, but she didn't try to pull away as he grabbed her wrist gently and extended her arm toward him.

At first, he didn't understand. He thought she had stolen something valuable, but then, she was a thief and she stole for a living. There was no reason for her to hide if it was something simple as that. Everybody on board knew that she was a thief. If something went missing and nobody knew where it was, it was standard procedure to ask Parker, more or less politely, to give it back, and she usually did. Stealing was like breathing for Parker, and nobody blamed her for it.

Alec glanced up, into her face. She still hadn't moved a single muscle, but her eyes were wide and focused on his face.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he declared softly. "Just let me see what happened, okay?"

He wasn't used to this skittish side of Parker anymore, and he didn't want to scare her but, at the same time, he had a feeling that he needed to find out what had happened. It was the same kind of feeling he'd had the first time he'd sat down in front of a computer. He just needed to know how it worked, and he didn't have any peace until he'd mastered the art of hacking into even the most secure files.

Slowly, he unwrapped the rags from Parker's arm. His fingers quickly became greasy with oil, and his frown grew bigger.

"Parker?" he asked again.

Her other arm suddenly shot out and her hand closed around his wrist, just before he could push back the last layer and look at what was hidden underneath.

"You can't tell anyone," she hissed urgently. "Hardison, you have to keep quiet. Please!"

He didn't reply. Instead, he glanced down at Parker's arm, carefully cradled in his own broad hand. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, against his, and it still was too cold.

Along the entire length of her forearm, the skin was split open in what Alec thought had to be a really bad injury. But instead of bone and blood, he only saw the clean lines of machinery.

"What..." he started, but Parker shook her head, blonde hair flying, before he could get out more than this one word.

"I don't know," she said and leaned her head back against the wall behind her. "I was lucky." She looked down at her other arm. "This one bleeds. That one doesn't."

Alec reached for her other hand, and to his astonishment, he realized that it was warm.

"How much of your body is like this?" he asked with a wave to her injured arm.

"I don't know," Parker admitted. "Maybe...half?" She shrugged and pulled her arm out of his grip, to wrap it up again. "Please don't tell anybody. Please, Hardison."

Maybe it was the shock. Alec wasn't sure, but he found himself agreeing to keep quiet about his discovery and not tell anyone, not even Nate or Eliot. He didn't remember how he left the vents, his thoughts occupied by a million other things has he crawled back the way he'd come and almost broke his neck as he fell, face-first, out of the access point in the engine room.

Parker had assured him that usually, malfunctions like the one she'd suffered healed on their own. Alec shuddered at the thought of how she'd figured that one out, how many injuries she'd already suffered to know that the mechanics had been there for as long as she remembered and that they'd always been part of her.

He was pretty sure that nobody was born with mechanical parts, though. Someone had implanted these in her when she'd been really young. The thought alone was enough to make the bile rise in Alec's throat. He felt deep compassion and sympathy for a younger Parker, and at the same time, a growing anger and disgust at the people who had done that to her.

Something, he decided, had to be done.

He didn't know yet what exactly, but it didn't stop him from sitting down in front of his computer, logging into the galaxy-wide net and starting to dig.

~*+*~

By the time he shut down his connection and looked up from his computer again, his eyes were gritty and blood-shot, the little clock at the edge of his screen told him it was late the next morning, and his brain was buzzing with facts and knowledge about robotics, cyborgs, androids and hybrids. Once he'd figured out where to start looking, the knowledge had fallen into his lap like an avalanche, each fact followed by several others, and every so often, he'd had to stop reading and press a fist against his mouth to stop the rolling and lurching of his stomach.

Cyborgs, he'd found out, had been created as fighting machines that were stronger and more durable than even the strongest humans. They had only one purpose in their lives, and they went after it with the cold ruthlessness and efficiency of computers. Robotics, on the other hand, were fairly common and used as prosthetics and hard manual labor, just as androids, which were completely mechanical and only looked human.

Parker belonged in the group of the hybrids. Like cyborgs, hybrids were part human, part machine, but they hadn't been created to fight. Alec still didn't understand how someone could take a little girl like Parker once had been and implant her with mechanical parts, but he was following some leads to figure out who exactly had done this to Parker, and, most likely, many others. If he was playing this right, he could sell it to Nate as a new case and they could get some kind of revenge or compensation for Parker, he thought grimly as he stood and stretched, his joints creaking and forcefully reminding him that he'd remained in one position for too long.

Everything he had read indicated that Parker's arm would heal itself within twenty-four hours and he made the decision to check up on her again later. First, he needed to stretch out and have a little nap - he just hoped that there wasn't any emergencies he needed to deal with. Nate had been quiet since they had finished their last job, content with navigating the ship back to the central planets, and there had been no word yet about a new job. It would only be a matter of time, Alec knew, but as long as everything was still quiet, he could take advantage and rest.

~*+*~

Eight hours later, Alec found himself in the vents again, his back bowed to prevent him hitting his head on the low ceiling and his back pulsing with a low ache.

There was, he thought darkly, a good reason why he was happy to let Parker do as much of the crawling-in-small-spaces as possible. He simply wasn't made for this.

"Well?" he asked Parker and nodded in the general direction of her arm. "How's it look?"

Parker shrugged slightly. "I don't know," she said and glanced down, at her arm. "Not good?"

"Not good?" Alec repeated disbelievingly. "What do you mean, not good? Did you not heal?"

"No?" It sounded more like a question than anything else, but Alec didn't pay attention to it. Worry and fear had balled themselves into a hard knot right under his breastbone and was now spiraling through his entire body, until he had to clench his teeth to hold back the nausea that went with it.

"How could you not heal, you're supposed to heal from all kinds of injuries and those implants are supposed to be top of the line, state of the art, it's even supposed to grow with you!"

"It does." Parker shook her head, her blonde hair flying. "Something went wrong."

Cold sweat broke out along the line of his spine, and Alec swallowed thickly. "Something went wrong?" he parroted.

"Yeah, something went wrong." Parker frowned. "Hey, it's a computer part. Can't you fix it?"

Alec was aware that his mouth had opened and closed a few times without any sound escaping, but he couldn't do anything about it. Fixing Parker - that was more than hacking into a governmental email account while juggling chainsaws while the ship had caught fire, and he was fully aware of it. On the other hand, it was Parker, and he would do anything for her. She was like a little sister, a foster sister maybe, and he felt fiercely protective of her.

"I'll see what I can do," he finally said. "But I'm not sure about poking around in your insides!" The thought brought another wave of nausea to the forefront of his mind. "Someone else needs to do that."

"No!" Parker's outburst was almost violent and it came with a frightening lurch of her frame in his direction, as if she wanted to stop him physically from telling anyone else. "You can't tell anyone! You promised!"

"Whoa!" Alec held up his hands in an attempt to placate Parker. "Hey, I'm not doing anything you don't want me to. I'm your friend, Parker."

She leaned back against the wall. "They can't ever find out," she said, her voice small, and for a long moment, Alec wanted nothing more than wrap his arms around her, pull her close and hold on to her with all the strength he had.

Parker would probably taze him if she knew what he was thinking, so he did the next best thing and promised her again that he wouldn't tell anyone. It seemed to calm her down well enough, but it left him with a bad taste in his mouth as he crawled back to the access point from which he'd come.

~*+*~

Figuring out a fix for a hybrid, Alec thought as he balanced his portable computer on his knees, was a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. Millions of complicated and intricate systems had to work together perfectly to allow her a normal range of motions, and those were embedded in delicate, human flesh. He was confident that he could figure out the mechanical systems, but he hadn't found a solution yet as to how he would bring his fix into Parker. He couldn't simply jam a drive into her and transfer data like that, even if the blueprints he'd downloaded all indicated that a slot for a small thumb drive existed somewhere. He was afraid of asking Parker about it and he wasn't suicidal enough to investigate it on his own, and so this question remained unanswered.

Keeping quiet about Parker's malfunction while still caught in the relatively small space of a ship proved to be hard, as well. In the evenings, when the lights were dimmed, Nate was at the wheel and staring out into space while drinking and thinking about who knew what, when Sophie had long given up and gone to bed, Alec crawled into the bunk he shared with Eliot and pressed his aching forehead against the other man's shoulder, trying to find some peace of mind to get the rest he needed. More than once, he wanted to confide in Eliot, but he had promised Parker to keep her secret, and he simply bit his tongue and swallowed the words that wanted to escape.

He could do this. He could find a fix for Parker, and he would find a way to get it into her, into the shattered arm that was pretty much useless by now and wouldn't get better until the mechanical parts in it would be replaced and adjusted.

In addition to working on that fix, he had to keep the ship up to their standards, make sure the engines were running smoothly, and pull together information about potential new clients.

"I'm done," he muttered one evening, his forehead pressed against Eliot's clavicle. He was lying sprawled and half across Eliot's strong body, the steady thrum of Eliot's heartbeat soothing and comforting him. "I'm so done, man. I need a vacation. On a planet. With real beaches and real water. You wanna come?"

Eliot grunted an answer that Alec couldn't decipher, but his hand came up and brushed briefly against the back of his skull in a caress that was unexpectedly gentle, and Alec took that as confirmation of Eliot's interest. His lips twisted into a smile. A vacation with Eliot would probably end up a real disaster. Eliot would want to spend as much time outside as possible, and Alec would hide in their hotel room with junk food and as much electronical entertainment as he could find. Alec wasn't comfortable with too much outdoors - he had grown up on a series of space stations and moons, wherever foster care had sent him, and had spent only short amounts of time planet-side. Eliot, on the other hand, was planet-born and bred and quickly grew restless when they were on board of the ship.

For a short second, he wondered where Parker had grown up, but he was too tired to spend much time thinking about it. Probably, he realized, like him, moving from one foster home to the next until she'd fallen off the grid and found herself living the life of a thief.

Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow, he would talk to her again and would try to convince her once again that she could trust the others. And then -

He didn't know, and he forced himself not to worry about it.

His fingers curled into Eliot's soft-washed shirt as he relaxed and slowly drifted off to sleep.

Eliot, he knew, would manage to squirm out from under him when he'd had enough sleep or just grew annoyed for whatever reason, and he didn't need to worry about him. There was no reason for him to move away from Eliot's chest and from the hand that was still petting him.

~*+*~

"Come on, girl. I'm begging you here. Don't be stupid." He knew how pathetic he sounded, but Alec didn't care. "You can trust Eliot. You know you can tell him."

"No." Parker's voice was flat, but there was no hesitation in her voice. She was as stubborn as ever, and no matter how much Alec begged her - on his knees, if he needed to - she wouldn't give in.

"Come on, girl." He slumped against the wall of the vent and rubbed his hand over his face. "We can...I don't know, I can fake an engine malfunction, we can find a nice planet, go to a clinic there if you don't want Eliot to do this. Please, Parker."

"No!" She flinched back from him this time until she was sitting as far from him as she could while being hooked up to a hastily-written diagnostics program Alec was running on her. "No hospital."

"I don't get it, man." Alec glanced down at the screen of his portable computer. "I really don't get it. You know Eliot has your back. How often has he gotten you out of a sticky situation, huh? Just because he growls and grumbles doesn't mean he isn't trustworthy. Okay, he isn't trustworthy, but he wouldn't do anything to hurt you. Too much. Ever. You know Eliot. He's a teddy bear."

It was a good thing they were in the vents, he thought. If Eliot knew that Alec thought of him as a stuffed toy, Alec's ass would be kicked out of their bunk a few times per night. Eliot was vindictive like that.

"He won't like me anymore," Parker muttered, her voice oddly hollow as her words echoed along the vent.

"He...what?"

"Eliot. He won't like me. You know he won't."

"Parker..." Alec trailed off. "What are you talking about? Of course he'll still like you. He probably won't say it, but..."

Parker shook her head almost violently. "Everybody knows Eliot isn't a fan of technical stuff and computers," she pointed out. "He threatened to break your computer yesterday."

"Yeah, but he wouldn't do that to you, girl." Alec shook his head and lifted his hands to gesticulate. "First of all, Nate wouldn't let him. And second, Eliot likes you."

"He does?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure, deep down in his heart, he does." Alec nodded vigorously.

Parker opened her mouth to say something, object probably or point out the many occasions when Eliot had threatened a piece of delicate equipment, but before she could say a single word, a thumping sound interrupted their conversation.

A thumping sound, as if someone was banging on the outside of the vent they were sitting in, which, Alec knew, was pretty much impossible, since they were in the wall, in the ceiling, to be exact, and there was no way anyone could bang on the walls.

"You know, you guys," a growl came from underneath them, "you're sitting right on top of a ventilation opening there."

"I know," Parker answered absent-mindedly. "Makes for good eaves-dropping..." She trailed off. Her eyes went almost comically wide, and she bit her lip.

"It really is," Eliot agreed readily.

Alec rolled his eyes. "What are you, a lurker?" he called out while his fingers moved quickly across his keyboard, to try and find out where exactly they were, where Eliot was.

"Yeah," Eliot called up. He sounded vaguely annoyed, the way he did sometimes when he wasn't quite pissed off yet, but could easily get there, with just a few gentle prods and pokes. "That's what I do."

Alec grimaced as he realized that they were right above the common area, above the kitchen. Eliot hadn't even needed to search for them. They had practically fallen right into his lap.

Parker probably thought Alec had done this on purpose, to set her up, and Alec didn't dare to look at her for a long moment.

"Will you come down now?" Eliot called out.

Parker's shoulders were slumped, but she still managed to look graceful as she climbed through the access grate and landed on her feet, her injured arm pressed tightly against her chest. Alec, who scrambled after her, looked more like a bag of potatoes falling through the hole and onto the ground.

"Hybrid, huh?" Eliot said to Parker and pushed a bowl in her direction.

"How did you know?" Parker wanted to know, but she reached for the bowl and curled herself around it protectively, as if she was afraid he would take it from her again.

Eliot shrugged. "Dated a bioengineer," he said by way of explanation. "'Sides, Hardison's not exactly subtle."

Alec wanted to protest, but the air was still knocked out of him and all he managed was a weak wheeze that didn't sound very threatening.

"Show me that arm."

Parker hesitated for a split second. "You promise you don't hate me?" she asked, her voice small enough that Alec's heart ached for her.

Eliot stared at her for a long moment.

"I promise," he finally said. "Come on, Parker. Let's take a look."

~*+*~

The shower on board of the _Leverage_ was small and there were strict rules about what to do in them and what not, courtesy of Sophie, who had threatened Alec's health more than once and had probably used neurolinguistic programming or more severe threats on Nate and Eliot.

Right now, Alec was standing on the tiles and letting water run over his shoulders while his head was hanging low. The water that swirled around his feet - to be filtered and re-used - had a reddish tinge as blood sluiced off his hands and forearms.

His stomach rolled at the memory of cutting into Parker's flesh, exposing gleaming metal and shattered pieces of crystal while her blood was painting Eliot's and his hands red.

He clenched his teeth and took slow, even breaths to keep himself and his stomach under control while reaching for the soap and beginning to scrub at his arms. He needed to get clean, get the smell and sight of Parker's blood off of him.

A sharp hiss and the cold draft of air against his exposed skin alerted him that someone had broken the door's encryption and was standing in the small space in front of the shower, but he didn't turn around to face them. Instead, he kept scrubbing.

"Hey."

The muscles in his shoulders and back tensed and knotted at the sound of Eliot's gravelly voice.

"How's Parker?" he managed to ask, his mouth dry and his throat tight.

"She's fine, Alec." Eliot's broad, strong hands that could do so much damage slid carefully over Alec's back. "She's asleep, but she'll be fine."

"You sure?" He almost bit his tongue as soon as the words were out. Of course Eliot was sure. He knew what he was doing and, just an hour ago, Alec had watched how these hands had carefully sewn the wound on Parker's arm shut, the same hands that a few days before had crushed a guy's windpipe.

"Come on, Hardison." Eliot grabbed his shoulders and turned him around, to face him. He was frowning slightly, his hair already matted down by water, and Alec could see the dried flakes of red on the cuticles of his hands. They had both worn gloves, but Parker's blood had still gotten on their skin. Alec knew that he should be worried about that, but he didn't have it in him right now.

"She's fine," Eliot repeated, his jaw set and his eyes blazing, and it was the expression on his face that finally convinced Alec.

Parker couldn't be anything but fine. It would annoy Eliot, and she wouldn't dare annoying him that much.

In his brain, that made enough sense to allow him to relax, finally, and wrap his long arms around Eliot's shoulders, to cling to him while he let Eliot kiss the rest of his doubts away.

Sophie gave them a dark look when they emerged from the shower together, but she didn't say anything, and Eliot wandered off to check on Parker.

"She okay?" Sophie asked Alec after a moment of silence, and all the muscles in Alec's shoulders that Eliot had managed to relax tensed up again.

"What?"

"Parker." Sophie rolled her eyes. "We know what you did, Hardison."

"We didn't do anything!" The denial was quick on his tongue, and he was glancing furiously around, trying to find an escape route.

"We know," Sophie said gently. "What she is. Nate said she can fix herself." Her lips thinned slightly. "So I just want to know if she's okay."

There was no escape. Sophie had him pinned, and she knew, had known from the beginning, and Alec didn't know if he wanted to cry in relief that he didn't have to keep this particular secret or be annoyed on Parker's behalf because Sophie and Nate knew and they never let on that they knew, but in the end, he just exhaled and shrugged.

"She'll be fine," he repeated Eliot's words and went to get some orange soda.

His knees were still trembling slightly as he sat down in front of his computer and stared at the blank screen.

~*+*~

Two days later, Parker was hanging from the support beams in the ceiling of the common area by her fingertips again, a happy smile on her face and the white bandage on her arm a bright spot against her dark clothes.

"Dammit, Parker," Eliot growled as he walked past, a fistful of green leaves in his hand, and Alec relaxed in his chair and continued hacking into a government email account with a smile on his face.

Things were going back to normal, he felt. A thought occurred to him, a genius idea to make Parker's mechanical parts even better than they already were, and he reached for another laptop when Nate wandered in, an all too familiar expression on his face.

"We have a new client. Hardison?"

Parker landed after an elegant salto and curled up at the table next to Sophie, Eliot put down the herbs and the sharp knife, and Hardison took the small external drive Nate handed him and plugged it into his computer.

Things were back to normal.

The end.


End file.
